Women are terrifying—and that’s really a pretty massive obstacle facing a lot of men like myself. I was at a grocery store the other day and saw a really cute girl walking the aisles, she smiled at me and I started thinking, “Man, if only I was the kind of guy who capitalized on this kind of thing.” I’m not completely hopeless or anything, but it takes a really confident kind of guy to approach a woman out of nowhere and start a conversation…

“Hey, you shop for dairy products? I shop for dairy products! Want to go somewhere to talk about dairy products and possibly make out?”

My opener wouldn’t necessarily be that bad, but even if I was charming, thought up a decent opener, and said everything a man in my position ought to, I still figure I have, at best, about a 1 in 10 chance of getting a date out of it.

This is really one of the bigger problems with dating. I imagine that women must have a complementary problem where 9 out of 10 guys hitting on them are dull, obnoxious, or at the very least not charming enough to warrant flirting with. (A’s comment: Not all women, just the more outgoing ones.)I’m sure there’s some strategy for improving those ratios, but it seems like a much easier way alternative solution is to just ask out more people.

Well, that only works if you actually have more people to ask out. A lot of people make fun of speed dating for its two-minute sessions of forced awkwardness and its definitive whiff of desperation, but it does demonstrate that an approach to dating built on volume appeals out of sheer utility.

What would really be great would be something that gave the same volume without the weirdness. Well, that may be available–with online dating.

I started using online dating sites after I felt like nothing else was working. The anecdote I mentioned earlier was not only true, but pretty common. I see pretty girls all the time, but I’ve always found approaching strangers to be unbelievably difficult.

This is where online dating can really shine–it makes it slightly more feasible to approach strangers. It doesn’t make it more successful, but it makes the approach much more feasible.

For all the bells and whistles of matching algorithms and personality quizzes, online dating gives you what the internet does best: it gives you volume; lots and lots of people to message in the hopes that 1 in 10 odds now leads to solid results. A dating site hands you nice guys a long list of ladies ready to be messaged, and hands girls an even longer list of guys in the hope that 1 out of the 100 messaging them is a decent match. (OKCupid runs a blog, OKTrends, in which they catalogue, among other things, the fact that there are a lot more guys than girls surfing for dates on the web). Also, it gives everyone a guarantee that the people on the list are at least potentially open to dating.

But is there a downside to all this volume? For a guy to have any success with a dating site, he’ll have to message as many people as possible in the hope that some of them respond. It’s an unreliable process, and it means that when he finally does start seeing a girl, it’s someone who’s only the result of an elimination process.

I originally went through several months of online dating without getting any responses, but when it rained it poured. Out of nowhere, I eventually got a whole rush of favorable responses, which led to some successful flirting and 3 dates with 3 different girls in the space of as many days. I imagine a lot of guys would be asking for high fives, but I actually felt uncomfortable about the whole experience.

It’s hard going out with a girl when I’m only considering her as 1 of 3 possible women to evaluate against each other. Even worse, it makes it hard to settle on one when you know there’s a still huge list available to message…all in all the set up was starting to feel weird and creepy. Internet creepy.

Strangely enough, I found myself hoping that my later dates would fail just so that I had an opportunity to thin down the list of potential women.

Of course, I’ve never had much experience with regular dating, so maybe this is just what comes with all dating and the big numbers in online dating just illustrates it more clearly. Maybe online dating is just what it took to push me into the experience of dating, and the weirdness I’m associating with volume and numbers is really just my reaction to how weird ALL dating is. (A’s: True that, man.) If that’s the case, then I really should just push through this awkwardness and try to develop a tolerance for it, right?

But maybe the difficulty connecting to people is an asset. Meeting strangers is a difficult experience, especially when you know you’ll be sizing each other up as romantic prospects. Some forced emotional distance helps take the edge off. Plus, if you spend enough time with someone, you’re going to connect with them regardless of how awkwardly you met. (A’s: Or the shared awkwardness will just make your connection that much stronger. Awkward turtles of a feather flocking together.)

Well, whatever the ultimate significance, I can say that I’ve met people I otherwise wouldn’t, and that alone is enough to call my first forays in the online dating world to be a net success so far.

My stories with internet dating are not over yet, though. I’m only scratching the surface of the experience as a whole. So, you can expect to hear more bits and pieces of my experience in the future.

Next time: dealing with the awkwardness that comes with online communication.

**(For reference, I use two online dating sites, okcupid.com and plentyoffish.com. OK Cupid is better, if you ask me, but both are free and I recommend using both.)

Nice guys really do finish last, and single guys around the world find this principle as confusing as they find it frustrating. So frustrating in fact that many of them go to the dark side.

Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a perfect example of this. Dr. Horrible is an aspiring supervillain (Dr. Horrible) trying to reach the big leagues of villainy in the hope that he can improve the world and impress the girlof his dreams, Penny. Dr. Horrible came to be as a result of a very common process:

——————————
Step 1: Perpetually Single

A budding Dr. Horrible grows up wishing for but failing to start romantic relationships. He’s probably shy and not very charming and falls into the “only a friend” category too often (see Ladder Theory). Or maybe his standards for women are too high. Whatever the reason, though, a Dr. Horrible develops a pattern of being perpetually single.

These reasons for being perpetually single may be why he’s paralyzed and unable to talk to the girl in Step 4.

Step 2: They All Suck….

Dr. Horrible starts to identify his target gender as the problem. The problem can’t be him, he’s a nice guy! So it must be some vast flaw with the other gender and how they only pick out jerks, etc. He resents women and he resents the men they fall for.

Dr. Horrible is still lonely, so he picks out a specific girl who he thinks is “different”. She may be more compassionate (volunteering at soup kitchens), friendly to him in a kind way (talking to him when no one else does), or maybe she just offered to hold a door for him—it doesn’t take much because no matter how bitter Horribles may get, they still want to believe that there’s someone out there for him, and it’s only natural to find a reason to justify developing a crush.

The chosen girl will then be put on a pedestal by Horrible who convinces himself that she’s perfect. And that he’d be perfect for her too, since he clearly loves her so much, even though he hasn’t actually gotten to know her in any real way.

Dr. Horrible’s love for Penny is the perfect example of this: he sings elaborate ballads about Penny being his one and only: “I’m the guy to make it real/ The feelings you’re afraid to feel”…all based entirely on the fact that he sees her regularly at a Laundromat. And never talks to her.

Step 4: Indirect Pursuit

Dr. Horrible will only ever pursue his crush indirectly. A Horrible is so emotionally invested in his crush that his feelings for her paralyze him, and his natural shyness can only make things worse. Asking her out, or even talking to her, would risk rejection (or the crush’s inevitable falling from the pedestal). So, instead, he goes after her indirectly: coming up with elaborate plans to impress her and fixates on how great things will get when they actually get together.

There’s a scene in Dr. Horrible where the doc is enacting part of his master plan to impress Penny. Penny approaches him, asking him to sign a petition. Dr. Horrible has the perfect chance to start talking to her and break the ice, but instead pushes his dream girl aside in favor of executing an elaborate plan to impress her.

Step 5: Falling Off the Pedestal

Dr. Horrible eventually loses his chance with his dream girl, probably because: (A) he asks her out and gets rejected (in lieu of not ever really having spoken to her or having made his intentions known), or (B) she gets together with a different guy before he has a chance to make his move.

He’ll take this badly, because he not only lost his dream girl, but she had the nerve not to recognize (from his silent, longing looks) how much he cared about her!

When his depression blows over and he only gets more bitter about everything, return to Step 2 and repeat ad nauseam.

It’ll only get worse from here on out, because the more bitter and nasty he gets, the less appealing he is, and the less appealing he is the more he projects his negative feelings onto others.

Whedon’s Horrible acts like he’s been personally betrayed when Penny starts dating Captain Hammer, despite the fact that he never before asked her out, or in fact even spoke to her in a significant way. He says, “There’s darkness everywhere and Penny doesn’t seem to care that soon the dark in me is all that will remain.” So, he essentially transfers the blame for his inability to make a move as her fault for “not caring”.

——————————
Guys like this often think of themselves as nice guys. Dr. Horrible’s touching love song to Penny seems sweet in a romantic comedy kind of way: he’s emotional, he’s sincere, and he obviously has a high opinion of her.

So what’s the problem?

Well, putting a girl on a pedestal might seem nice in theory, but when Dr. Horribles idolize a girl, they aren’t really in love with her—they’re in love with the perfect girl ideal that they want her to be. They haven’t necessarily taken the time to get to know her—who she really is. And they may not be happy with what they find if they keep their expectations so high. It also isn’t fair to expect a girl to be responsible for fixing Horribles’ busted view of women, and she isn’t going to want to try.

No matter how much Whedon’s Dr. Horrible is painted the sincere underdog, you can’t help but wonder what exactly Penny is supposed to find attractive about him when his only personality traits are crushing despair about everything, a creepy obsession, and a meek inability to act on his crush.

It’s only natural to feel that the only way to overcome complete feelings of hopelessness is to nurture the idea that there is a girl who is different than the others. If every other girl rejects you, then a girl would have to be different from them to go out with you…right?

Well, it doesn’t work like that, and, empathy aside, if guys want to pull themselves out of singledom, the first step has to be understanding what’s going wrong with themselves. Dr. Horribles have to pull themselves out of their heads, take the girl off the pedestal and act on their feelings. They just have to talk to the girl, and actually get to know who she really is. And do so before she ends up with the other guy.

In high school I had a huge crush on this girl named Lisa. She was tall, gorgeous, and most importantly intellectual. She consumed books like candy, wove words like a needle and thread, and had me wrapped around her finger. So when she told me to promise her that I’d read Pride and Prejudice, I couldn’t refuse. She loved this book and always had it close to her heart so I assumed that it’d give me some insight into her mind, and hey, maybe a way into her pants. But when I started reading it, all I could think of was, “How can anyone like this bullsh*t?”

I would only begin to understand this a few years down the road.

Almost every woman I’ve ever met has loved Pride and Prejudice. Could it be the Victorian elegance? The luxurious culture? The fancy balls? Nay, it’s Mr. Darcy. For those of you who are (thankfully) unfamiliar, Mr. Darcy is the book’s primary love interest.

Essentially the storyline goes like this: Mr. Darcy meets Liz. Mr. Darcy is a dick to Liz. Liz is pissed off by Mr. Darcy but is still intrigued. Mr. Darcy continues to be a dick to Liz. Liz ensnares Mr. Darcy with her feminine wiles. Mr. Darcy reveals his true side and is actually a lovely, caring, nice guy and his dick personality was actually a protective facade.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same storyline for every chick flick ever made. Pride and Prejudice is the ancestral origin of the modern romantic comedy. And for good reason. Mr. Darcy is the embodiment of the ultimate female fantasy.

Women always complain that there are no nice guys out there. But of course, this isn’t the case. [A: Most women know this, but most women also have the Cleopatra Complex–we’re queens of denial.] There are lots of them, it’s just that women prefer someone of a more inconsiderate nature. Women ultimately want to change an a**hole into a nice guy through their relationship. In a way, it’s a badge of honor. If a woman does manage to find the softer side of a dickish personality (no pun intended), she’s done something that no other female has been able to do. And people ask why the a**hats always get the girls. The bad boys are their challenge to overcome. The nice guys are supposed to be the end result — not the starting point.

Here’s the problem, though: Mr. Darcy doesn’t exist. An a**hole is an a**hole is an a**hole. Sure, maybe he used to be a nice guy, but now he’s an inconsiderate douche. Guys don’t start out like this, nor do they spontaneously transform into dicks. It’s a slow process of realization that leads them to learn that the nice guys really do finish last. And when they realize that being an a**hole does help them gain the interest of women, there’s no turning him back to the nice guy. It’s a one-way process.

So what now? Are women doomed to forever be with either the nonchalant asshole or the undesirable nice guy? No. It’s just a matter of balance. We all have a level of toleration for asinine behavior. You just have to find the guy who has just enough of it not to be the pushover nice guy and still not be a full blown a**hole. Happy hunting!

Term of the Day

Darcy Syndrome [dar-see] [sin-drome]
– noun

1. Wherein a woman mistakenly believes that she can change a man with a**hole-like behavior into a considerate gentleman

When I was a young and innocent girl, one winter, I discovered my first, true love. We met at night, a prequel meeting to drunken boxing at a party (I know, so romantic). We flirted. He asked me out. Unfortunately, for me, this first, true love–or boyfriend at the very least–lived in a land far away.

Alas, my plight was that my new boyfriend was in college. I was in high school at the time and the idea of a college boyfriend seemed alluring, forbidden, mature. He was also a fireman and had amazing abs. But moving on from salivation, I quickly realized his college was over 8 hours away. That for me, as a young lover with no driver’s license at the time, was hard.

But we saw each other every couple of months, over break, for a special weekend–and we talked ALL the time over IM (instant message), the phone, hell, he even became a regular reader of my personal blog at the time (talk about devotion). To me, he seemed like the perfect boyfriend. Attentive, romantic, he’d say all the right things at all the right times, whenever he saw me he’d bring chocolates, I’d write him poetry (I know–don’t bother saying it), we’d help each other concentrate on our studies. And finally, six months later, our patient and distant love paid off. Summer came and we were together at last. He was from my hometown and we started spending all of our time together.

It took me about a month to realize there were so many problems in our relationship… so many problems I had with him.

So many problems that I hadn’t noticed over the phone or IM or the brief moments that we snatched together and snuggled on our ‘honeymoon’ trips to see one another. I won’t go in depth about my problems with him–it’s not really fair, since he hasn’t really got the chance to defend himself here. But to summarize, I realized that we didn’t really have anything to talk about. We had almost nothing in common.

Furthermore, I realized that I would’ve figured this out mere weeks (or even days) into our relationship if I had dated him in person, instead of through the internet, through the phone, and through distance. Because of the distance, I was allowed to romanticize his silence at my chatterings of things he had no interest in. The moments we got to see each other we were always in great moods–it was like taking a romantic vacation away from our lives. But when we started spending every day with one another. I realized just how much we didn’t mesh. Our relationship had been conceived in a romantic ideal, in a honeymoon that we gave ourselves whenever we saw one another–it wouldn’t, and didn’t, survive the banality of the every day.

Now, I’m not knocking online relationships. Hell, I’m not even knocking long-distance relationships. I’m just saying they’re not for me, and that’s what I learned here. I think all of those things can occur and depending on your personality and your needs from a relationship, they can even thrive. I know people who have had years’ worth of long-distance and internet relationships. And that really works for them.

My grandmother and grandfather, for instance, were married for more than fifty years–and they started their relationship by letter-writing during World War II. They got married and my grandfather pretty much shipped out again. Then, after the war, my grandmother worked as an obstetrician, delivering babies all through the night, while my grandfather worked through the day as a technician. They rarely saw each other most of the time. After that, my grandmother immigrated to Canada by herself because she was unable to gain visas for my mother and her siblings–so all in all, my grandmother and grandfather spent most of their relationship apart. My mother told me that her earliest memories are of her father waiting in line at a public telephone to call long-distance from Taiwan to Canada and that he’d written down everything he wanted to say, because it was too precious a phone call to waste not knowing what to say. Now that my grandfather is dead, my grandmother often jokes that she doesn’t feel like he’s gone–she just feels like she’s waiting to be with him again, like all the rest of their relationship (romantic, I know).

What I learned about myself, comparing my experience to my grandparents’, is that I really can’t stand not knowing someone’s everyday self. I need the farts (oh, yes, that darling aspect of all our closest relationships), the bad moods, the good moods, the ignoring for computer time moods, the cooking, the cleaning, the shouting. I need all of that for a relationship to work with me. I need a relationship that is grounded in the everyday for me to survive not killing the person I’m with because I can’t stand their bad habits. For me, at least, there’s a comfort in the familiar and it helps me if their bad habits slowly chip away at my awareness–I just stop noticing it after a while. And I’m able to focus and appreciate the person’s ability to be there for me when I need them to be.

But that’s just me. And I realize that a good relationship and good communication can come in more ways than one.

So the lessons, I think, we’ve got from this analysis are:

1) Again, with the Know Thyself stuff. But really, relationships are all about knowing who you are and what you want and need.
2) Don’t knock it before you’ve tried it (unless it’s something you know you really can’t deal with it). Because even though the Honeymoon Complex didn’t work out for me, it could work out for you. And the experience allowed me to learn more about myself. Plus, the sex is great.

Term of the Day

Honeymoon Complex [ˈhə-nē-münˈkäm-pleks]
-noun
1. A product of long-distance or internet romantic relationships whereupon a couple feel euphoric or romantically idealistic upon seeing one another for only short periods of time.

Y’know that episode in Seinfeld about the ‘jimmy legs’ or the leg twitching at night? Okay, if you don’t, it goes something like: Kramer (one of the funny, awkward characters) enjoys sleeping with this woman, Emily, but he doesn’t actually enjoy SLEEPING with her. The show shows him unable to sleep all night in the same bed as her because her leg twitches. Kramer goes to his friend Elaine talking about his problem. The sex is GREAT, but the sleeping, not so much. Elaine tells him to talk to Emily about it. He does and a reluctant Emily agrees to try sleeping in their separate apartment beds. Kramer does the next night (awkwardly jumping out of bed immediately after sex), comfortably settling into his own bed, only to think neurotically that a neighbor jiggling his doorknob at night is the infamous cat burglar–and he is unable to sleep again. The next night, he asks Emily if they can go back on their agreement, because of the cat burglar–Emily refuses. She’s had much better sleep without him, too. She says he screams a little in his sleep.

Hilarious, right? No wonder Seinfeld went on for so long. But I tell this story to my boyfriend one night when we’re grabbing dessert in a little pastry place down the street and he thinks it’s amazing (never having watched Seinfeld before). I can see the realization dawning on his face: that this is something that probably sums up our two-year relationship for him.

According to him, I don’t just twitch in my sleep–I run a marathon in my sleep. Kicking, rolling, pouncing, punching. Supposedly, I’ve woken him up, not once, but several times by rolling and hitting him square in the face with a whack of my elbow. You think, it’s funny, right? Because I have almost no memory of this, passing out again supposedly immediately after apologizing. But, I think, after several months of this, it becomes drastically less funny. At least for my poor boyfriend who sleeps next to me every night in a queen-sized bed at 6’2″, 190 lbs. For a girl who’s only 5’2″ and 115 lbs, it’s pretty hilarious to say that I can defend my side of the bed in sleep quite sufficiently, but the queen-sized bed barely fits the boyfriend when he’s alone.

And so. The epiphany that has hit almost every male in America hit him then. The comedy, Seinfeld, sums up almost every heterosexual man’s view on relationships.

I know the heterosexual women that are reading this entry are thinking: seriously? That’s what sums up relationships to guys? Yes, the show about nothing. That, I think, is what sums up hetero-mens’ view on relationships. Here’s the equation:

Shoes + make-up + bags + pantyhose (or no pantyhose? do I look like a tramp when I don’t wear pantyhose??…) + hair + hair product + shampoo + perfume + a subscription to Vogue + a subscription to Times magazine (because men are attracted by looks but stay because of our looks and intelligence) + yoga classes + to smoke or not to smoke (it looks sexy, but god, those wrinkles) + are we getting wrinkles? + should I shave my legs tonight? + is it skanky to do the deed on the first date? + what deed? what base? + ….

Need I go on? It’s pretty much an endless soup of questions and problems for women when it comes to relationship.

How Women View Relationships = Sex and the City. To see more on this, you should go out and rent Sex and the City (all of the seasons) on Netflix or from Blockbuster. Because there’s simply too much to talk about in that show. It’s simply the contrast of how most men view relationships (as pretty simple, pretty quirky) versus how most women view relationships.

So the lessons we have from this are:

1) Women are complicated. We just are. We have a lot going on. Men, please just understand. Take that step back when you know you’re about to say something crazy (like “Dear Lord, you are crazy, woman…”) and just let it go. It will help you in the long run.
2) Men… view relationships simply. At least the heterosexual men that I know. They just do. Ladies, let’s just take that same step back and try to understand that, too. Though, frankly–you got me.

Terms of the Day

Seinfeld [sīn–fěld]
– proper noun, television show
1. A school of thought as to how men view relationships simply and with amusing, anecdotal-worthy quirks.Carrie [ka-rē] / Sex and the City [sěks-nd-–st]
– proper noun, television show
1. A school of thought as to how women view relationships neurotically, obsessively, and on HBO.

[Frankie’s Comments: I would say Entourage is S&C for men, but this seems to be more fitting than I thought.]

Since the dawn of time, man has chased after two types of women. Well, maybe the dawn of time is a bit of a hyperbole. It’s probably closer to when they could wrap their dongs and not leave a horrible mistake. Let’s start over, shall we?

Since the time when man could wrap his dong and not receive a horrible baby-shaped-mistake nine months down the line, he has chased after two types of women: the Krispy Kreme and the Dunkin’ Donut. These two are polar opposites, black vs. white, Yin vs. Yang, people who wear Crocs vs. anyone who isn’t a fucking retard. Now let’s break it down.

Krispy Kremes are the ultimate donuts. They are light, fluffy, and just plain sugary perfection. I have, on occasion downed an entire baker’s dozen in one go. Shortly after, I had a mini-coronary. More significantly though, I wouldn’t think about them again for months on end.

Krispy Kremes (KK) are the women every man dreams of. They are the ones that knock you off your feet the moment they enter the room. They are gorgeous, impulsive, adventurous, and like a part of God’s practical joke–mostly high maintenance. These are the women that cause empires to crumble (A: Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Angelina Jolie) and men to go bankrupt. Every man wants one, but eventually can’t handle them.

Dunkin’ Donuts are the kind of donuts that you wake up to every day. They become part of a ritual. You have one with your morning cup of coffee, and your day starts off with a stride. You do this for months on end, every weekday, and it becomes almost second nature.

Dunkin’ Donuts (DD) are the kind of woman you don’t mind waking up to every morning (A: Jennifer Aniston). They aren’t amazing but they’re consistently good. They’re nice, they fulfill your needs to an extent, but they only meet the quota — they don’t tend to exceed it. But after a while it gets boring and thoughts start drifting off to finding yourself a Krispy Kreme to knock boots with.

John F. Kennedy is the perfect embodiment of the conflict between man’s desire for both a DD and a KK. Jackie Kennedy was the perfect housewife. She was cultured, beautiful, and intelligent. She was the ideal housewife, which ironically, made her dull after a while. A prototypical DD. On the other hand Marilyn Monroe was the paradigm of KKs. She was a firecracker – smoking hot, unpredictable, impulsive, and utterly uncontrollable. She threatened to unravel JFK’s life. Despite this, JFK was helpless to resist her charms.

It’s a cycle of self destruction for men. Our tastes rotate between the stable but mediocre DDs and the unpredictable but explosive KKs. In the end though, all we can hope for is someone who keeps our interest but won’t leave us in shambles by the end of the relationships. Like the great scribe, Ludacris, once said, “We want a lady on the street, but a freak in the bed.”* Unfortunately, this DD-KK hybrid doesn’t exist. So take your pick gentlemen. Death by either boredom or bankruptcy.

Term of the Day

Krispy Kreme [krspkrm]
-noun, yummy donut store
1. A woman who is incredibly hot, but is impulsive, unstable, high maintainance and likely to lead to ruin.

Dunkin’ Donut [dngk-in dnt]
-noun, yummy donut store
1. A woman who is nice and meets all requirements on paper, but is otherwise dull, lifeless, and brings no excitement later in the relationship.

*”Yeah!” by Usher, ft. Ludacris and Lil’ Jon
[A’s Comments: Please feel free to take offense at this analogy, females. I certainly do. Though, I certainly can’t help but see some underlying truth here, as well..]

Greg: From the first moment I saw Noelle, I was ham.George: Did you just say ham?Noelle: Here we go.Greg: You’re either ham or eggs. You gotta ask yourself in every situation are you the chicken or are you the pig?George: So its pig or chicken?Greg: Look you gotta play the ham and eggs. Now, now the chicken is involved in the meal, now the pig, now the pig is committed, so the question is are you involved or are you committed.George: Ham or eggs!Greg: Ham or eggs.
–Grey’s Anatomy, “Let The Angels Commit”

Almost every person I know has been ham and eggs in the span of their romantic relationships. I’ve even been ham one minute and eggs the next minute in certain relationships. But the real question has always been: Is it better to love or to be loved?

Because in every relationship there’s always the more committed person. The person who is more willing to compromise. The person who wants the relationship to work more. He or she is the ham.

To be honest, in my relationship right now, I’m most definitely the ham. I pursued the guy I’m with. I asked him out. I said the ‘L word’ first. Hell, I moved across the country for the person that I’m with. And deep down in my heart of hearts, I know that if we were to ever break up, I’d be the one to have control over it.

But see, that’s what works for me as ham. For some unknowable reason, I feel like I have more control over the relationship. Since I pursued, I was given the choice of the person I wanted to be with. He, of course, had to choose back. But I was given the chance to see, first, and thus accept first, the flaws of the person that I’m with. And in so doing, I realize that I am the one who has to compromise on my flaws, first, adapt myself to the other person’s needs, first. Personally, I’m okay with this, as the person that I’m with identifies flaws that I mostly agree are flaws. I have a bad temper, I can be impatient, I tend to speak inarticulately if I’m unprepared or nervous. I like that being with the person that I’m with forces me to slowly change these flaws. I’m much less likely to snap when really angry now, I’m just a little more patient than I was before I met this person, and I tend to think before I speak so to allow myself less inarticulate speech.

Sure, there are habits that I’ve developed before that I would never have allowed while single–the guy I’m with is a complete slob, and now, for the sake of keeping the peace, I let the dishes sit in the sink for up to a week or more. Not to mention the number of dirty socks that sit on the floor of his side of the bed…

But frankly, these aren’t things that matter quite so much to me. The things that matter most to me, he’s got: he’s smart, ambitious, we share the same sense of humor, he’s laidback (he lets me choose the movies, the restaurants) [F: Note, this usually elicits an “I don’t know… you choose” exchange with most girls. Also known as unappreciated indecisiveness.] , he’s willing to compromise on most every day things, and most of all, he cares about me and pushes me to do the things that I want to do.

In all of this, I feel like it’s better for me as a person to be the pig or the ham, because otherwise I’d be too domineering of a person–I’m already as alpha female as most people can stand. I know myself well enough (and have been egg in enough relationships) to know that this works for me. And I think that’s the most important part of having The Ham and Egg Debate with yourself. Knowing Thyself. Knowing what you want from a relationship and knowing how the other person that you’re interested in or who is interested in you can fulfill your needs and wants.

Because, to me, it’s all about balance. I’m with a person who’s an egg, but when push comes to shove, he’s pig, too. He asked me to move across the country with him. He also compromised on the idea of moving for me if I get accepted into graduate school.

So we have two lessons from this:

1) Know Thyself, first and foremost. Know what you want and know what you’re willing to accept (that’s less than stellar) in a relationship.
2) Don’t end up with someone who’s not willing to be both pig and chicken for you, too. Because nothing can be completely one-sided. That’s what we call a stalker’s relationship.

George: You and me: We’re like ham and eggs. I was the chicken, I just want you to know that, I know that I was the chicken. You put yourself out there, you were committed and I was just puttin’ the eggs on the plate. Not the ham because you were the pig. (This catches Callies attentions and she glares at him) I was just involved, but now I’m committed.Callie: Did you just call me a pig?George: No… as a metaphor.Callie: Calling me a pig?George: No, the point is that you’re not the pig anymore. Now I am the pig. I’m the pig. I am the pig. (Callie glares at him and walks away) I… am the pig.
–Grey’s Anatomy, “Let The Angels Commit”

Terms of the Day

ham [hām]
– noun
1. A person who is extremely committed to the relationship.egg [ěg]
– noun
1. A person who is merely involved in the relationship, and is somewhat less committed than the other person.
[F’s Comments: bacon [bay-cun]-noun1. A person who adds nothing to the relationship but just tastes really good. (See future entry on The Threesome.)]

About a year ago in Thailand, my friends and I signed up for a day tour of Phuket’s islands. With all the tropical fish, isolated islands, and crystal clear waters surrounding us, I was more relaxed than I’d ever been. This would cost me later because at about mid-day our speedboat stopped at the aptly named Monkey island.

So you’re probably thinking, “Oh cute! Monkeys. They must be fun to play with.” In which case, you thought WRONG. Being the genius I am, and perhaps a bit cocky from the handful of sliced bananas in my hand, I quickly made my way toward the shrieking mass of monkeys, hoping to get a picture of myself feeding one of the babies. Next thing I knew, I had a giant screaming fur-ball latched onto my leg by the teeth.

My survival instincts overwhelmed my desire for dignity and I started running around the beach screaming, trying to get the distinctively not-a-baby monkey off of my leg. After a few seconds of flailing unsuccessfully, I made beeline for the water. Right as I jumped in, the monkey hopped off and ran back to his friends (probably to make fun of that idiot human he’d just terrorized).

I, on the other hand, was sitting alone in the water with sand up my butt and a bewildered look on my face.

So what the hell does this have to do with relationships?

Every girl I’ve dated has fallen head over heels for me at the beginning. [A: Because, he’s tall, bald, and handsome. Oh, yes, and ladies, he’s single.] There’s always some initial signal of inordinately deserved affection that’s both off-putting and endearing at the same time. Such examples include gems like, “I’m sad because I’ll probably never see you again” (Said after one week), and “I need to treat you like an asshole because I’m afraid I’m falling for you” (Said after two days). Now most guys would run like a Kenyan at the sound of these phrases, but I blame the endorphins-after-sex for the stupid decisions that lead me to sticking around. So I tend to be pretty complacent when things are just getting started.

The ironic part is that just when I actually start to feel the same way and express the same sentiments, the girl becomes cold. Right when I’m ready to dive into the water, she runs away. (You’re starting to see where this is going now, eh?)

And I’m left sitting alone in the water with sand up my butt and a bewildered look on my face.

A few weeks after the monkey biting incident, my friends told me that the monkey might have had rabies and that I should go see a doctor. If it wasn’t enough that the monkey had destroyed my chances of wooing any of the girls I was traveling with (apparently screaming “Oh my god, it’s biting me! Get it off! Get it off!” isn’t the best aphrodisiac), I now had to go through a series of vaccine shots into my gut.

So we have two lessons from this:

1) Even if someone really likes you at the beginning, that doesn’t mean they always will. Figure your shit out quick because you can’t rely on them having those same feelings forever.
2) Even if they’re attached permanently to your leg, that doesn’t mean they don’t have any diseases. Wrap that sh*t up. Needles are painful.

Term of the Day

rabid monkey [rab-id] [muhng-kee]
– noun
1. A person who is initially extremely dedicated to the relationship but becomes less so when the partner begins to express the same feelings.

[A’s Comments: This monkey wasn’t rabid–it was smart. Anytime that a person is less than lukewarm to you (*cough*, Frankie), my advice is don’t bother entertaining the thought that they’re a Mr. Darcy. Just tell them to figure their sh*t out and move on to the next. But for more thoughts on this, please see future entry on The Ham and Eggs Debate.]